Sweet Bean Paste

by Durian Sukegawa

‘Let’s go for a little walk, shall we?’ she suggested, and they all stood up to leave.

  18

  The three set out on the road through the grounds, with Sentaro carrying Marvy’s cage. Away from the shop, the quietness returned.

  ‘For treatment – such as it was – we didn’t have drugs like Promin at first.’

  Promin: this was the name of the drug used for treating Hansen’s disease. Sentaro and Wakana both knew from their reading on the internet the change it brought about in ending a long history of suffering.

  ‘But that medicine helped cure you, didn’t it?’ Wakana asked, standing close by Tokue’s side.

  ‘We’d all heard about it, and how incredibly effective it was. But it wasn’t getting to Japan. That’s why we patients banded together to get action, and started a campaign to let us have access to Promin. There were protests in every sanatorium. Any earlier and we would have been thrown in detention cells for that.

  ‘Detention cells? You had that kind of thing? I—’ Sentaro broke off in confusion before he could let slip anything about his own experience of cells.

  ‘The Kusatsu sanatorium had a solitary cell. Every sanatorium had detention cells, but if anyone got sent to isolation in Kusatsu there was little chance of coming back alive. People were locked up for months at a time in a pitch-black room with no sun. In winter it was sealed off by snow and they’d freeze to death.’

  Wakana’s face registered shock.

  ‘People go crazy in the dark and die,’ Tokue said gently. ‘People from here got sent to detention in Kusatsu, too, for starting a strike, and died there.’

  What must Tokue have seen here as a young girl, Sentaro wondered, with thoughts of his own time behind bars. What must she have gone through?

  ‘If I hadn’t gotten sick, though, I wouldn’t have given another thought to what happened to people with this disease. When I was little I saw tramps taken away on police trucks because they were suspected of having leprosy. Public-health workers came and squirted them down mercilessly with white powder while they crouched down in the back. Because I’d seen that kind of thing, I was scared of lepers. For a long time after I came here, it was unbearable to have to see them every day. Even if I was one.’

  Sentaro wanted to say something sympathetic, but words failed him.

  ‘The ones that got brought here after their illness was far gone had symptoms all over their bodies,’ Tokue continued in a subdued tone. ‘There were people with nodules, big lumps and scabs – that’s the kind of thing this illness does to you. Some had their fingers fall off, others their nose. It wasn’t an unusual sight before the medicine became available. It was dreadful seeing people suffering like that, knowing that’s what would happen to me eventually. I was terrified.’

  Tokue stopped walking. They had reached a lone small hillock that looked almost man-made. Late-autumn grass blooms dotted the slope among the trees and shrubs.

  ‘We all longed for home. This is where we came when we felt homesick.’ Tokue pointed to steps cut into the earth and leading up the slope.

  ‘This hill was here before I arrived. Able-bodied patients built it from earth they dug up when they were forced to clear the forest. People would climb up to see the mountains in the distance and think about where they came from.’

  ‘Did you used to climb up here too, Tokue?’ Wakana asked.

  Tokue stood still. She made no move to lead them up the steps.

  ‘Yes I did. Many times. But all it did was make me feel sad, because I couldn’t go outside. Downright miserable, in fact. So I stopped coming here. Instead—’ She broke off and sneezed loudly once, then pulled out the tissues again to blow her nose. ‘The colds going around this year are quite stubborn.’ Tokue suddenly smiled. ‘That was an order from himself, warning me not to speak badly of him.’

  Sentaro looked at Tokue quizzically.

  ‘My husband,’ she answered. ‘The last time I was up there, I was having a little cry by myself when somebody spoke to me. The man who became my husband.’

  ‘Really? What was he like?’ Wakana asked.

  Tokue laughed. ‘What can I say? I still don’t know,’ she said bewilderingly.

  They set off again along a path leading out of the dense woods. Thick layers of leaf litter covered the ground. Sentaro felt more like they were walking through ancient forest than the grounds of a sanatorium.

  Sentaro and Wakana walked behind Tokue in silence.

  Abruptly she began speaking again, as if she had just remembered something. ‘Of course he couldn’t go off to the war because he was born with a weak heart. But he worked. Can you guess what he did?’

  Sentaro shook his head.

  ‘He worked at a confectioner’s in Yokohama.’

  ‘Really? Then…’

  ‘Yes. I learned everything I know about confectionery from my husband.’

  ‘So that’s how you learned,’ replied Sentaro, sounding brighter than he had since setting foot in the grounds of Tenshoen.

  ‘Now I get it,’ said Wakana beside him.

  ‘He was a tall man – like a palm tree. After he found out he was sick and quit his job at the confectioner’s, he decided to die on the road. He travelled around the whole of Japan like a beggar. But he’d have been better off coming straight to the sanatorium instead.’

  ‘I bet he wanted to escape all this,’ said Wakana.

  Tokue looked at Wakana with a pained expression. ‘Yes, I’m sure he did. You’re probably right. By the time he was brought here the disease had progressed a lot. He was always tossing and turning about because of the pain. I couldn’t bear to watch him. The nerve inflammation was so bad it made holes in his hands. But you know, I rarely ever heard him speak bitterly or curse the gods. That man had great powers of endurance.’

  ‘Why…Why did something like that happen to him?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Sentaro asked Wakana, with his eyes still on Tokue.

  ‘Why is it that a simple confectionery-maker has to suffer so much?’

  ‘Isn’t that the truth,’ Tokue said, walking slowly ahead of them. ‘Isn’t it indeed…’ she said again. ‘Anyone who was ever shut up in here has thought that. I’d like to get hold of the gods – if there really are any – and give them a good clout for all they put us through.’

  ‘You’ve been through a lot,’ Sentaro said.

  Tokue nodded emphatically. ‘But you know, we just tried to get on with our lives as best we could.’

  She stopped walking. Sentaro and Wakana halted too.

  ‘In the old days, the fire truck wouldn’t come here if there was a fire. Police wouldn’t come if there was a crime. That’s how isolated we were. We had to do everything for ourselves. We formed our own neighbourhood associations and even made our own money. We had currency you couldn’t use anywhere except here.’

  ‘Even money?’ Wakana’s mouth fell open.

  Tokue nodded. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘There was no choice. We all had to pull together to get by. There was a woman who used to be a geisha before she got sick, she made kimonos and taught traditional ballad singing. A former teacher ran the school for children. A barber cut people’s hair. That’s how we did everything. We had Western needlework and Japanese-style needlework groups, as well as a gardening group and a fire-fighting squad.

  Tokue walked off slowly again. Tiny flowers on the side of the path quivered in the breeze. This could be a beautiful woodland scene anywhere, thought Sentaro.

  ‘Everybody had experience of some kind in society. As that geisha used to say, everyone has their own talent. That’s why my husband and I had no hesitation about joining a particular work group.’

  Tokue looked back, her head framed by the delicate wildflowers in the background. Sentaro and Wakana were following behind her, and stopped when she did.

  ‘We joined the Confectionery Group.’

  ‘There was such a thing?’ Sentaro said.

  ‘Yes, there was. Had been for a l
ong time apparently. In the beginning it was just people who got together to make pounded rice at New Year and kusamochi pounded-rice cakes with mugwort and sweet bean paste in the spring. I guess it was started by a professional confectionery-maker who came here in the past.’

  ‘So that’s why you were making sweet bean paste the last fifty years!’ Sentaro clapped his hands. At last the mystery was solved.

  ‘We didn’t just make bean paste, you know. We did Western-style confectionery as well.’

  ‘And that’s why you thought of putting cream in a dorayaki,’ said Wakana excitedly.

  ‘That’s right.’ Tokue smiled.

  ‘The Tenshoen Confectionery Group…’ Sentaro repeated.

  ‘Yes, it’s been going a long time. We had to do something to make life better. With this disease the eyesight gets weaker and sensation in the fingers and toes is gradually lost. But for some reason sensation in the tongue is the last to be affected. Can you imagine what it’s like for someone who can’t see or feel, to taste something sweet?’

  Sentaro drew a long breath. He didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Wow,’ said Wakana, and fell silent.

  ‘You’ve had a hard time,’ said Sentaro, recovering himself.

  Tokue mumbled something indistinctly. ‘The one who really had a hard time is in there,’ she said with a faint smile, pointing her crooked fingers along the path to where it ended and woodlands gave way to bushes.

  They saw a stone tower looming over a clipped grassy area.

  ‘That’s where my husband was laid to rest,’ Tokue said as she approached the tower with slow, deliberate steps.

  ‘In the old days, if it got out that someone had leprosy, the rest of the family had to leave their home too. That’s how strong fears about it were. It’s also why most of us had our names struck from the official family registers, and never got them restored. Tokue Yoshii is the name I was given when I came here.’

  ‘What?’ Sentaro stared at Tokue. ‘It’s not your real name?’

  Wakana, too, was wide-eyed in disbelief.

  ‘That’s right. It’s not my real name.’

  ‘Really…I can’t believe…’ Sentaro couldn’t finish the sentence and fell silent. Wakana said nothing.

  They reached the stone cairn and stopped in front of it.

  ‘This is the charnel house for those who die at Tenshoen.’

  ‘What’s a charnel house?’ Wakana asked.

  ‘A place to put bones. We don’t have graves. My husband, Yoshiaki, is here too. Free from pain at last. I’m sure he’s dreaming of his favourite bean-jam buns.’

  Tokue put her hands together. ‘Yoshiaki, I brought some young people with me today.’

  Sentaro watched her small frame from behind. He put the birdcage down and joined Wakana as they put their hands together in prayer.

  A bulbul sang a long melodic warble and Marvy twittered in reply.

  ‘I, um…’ Tokue dropped her hands. ‘When the day came we were finally allowed to leave this place, I thought I could return home. But it was difficult. My mother and brothers were dead by then. I got in contact with my sister but…she begged me not to go back, so I couldn’t. I had nowhere to go back to. Yoshiaki didn’t have any family who’d take him back either. The bones of more than 4,000 people are in here. When the law changed, for one happy moment we all thought we could go home. But more than a dozen years have passed since then and almost no one has come forward to take us back. The world hasn’t changed. It’s just as cruel as it always was.’

  Tokue spoke flatly, as if talking about someone else. Then she turned to Wakana and smiled. ‘Sorry to burden you with so much sadness today, my dear. But I tell you, it’s a weight off my chest to be able to talk about it. Thank you for listening.’

  Wakana shook her head quickly side to side as if to say, not at all. ‘Tell me more if you like,’ she said.

  ‘You too, boss,’ said Tokue, turning to Sentaro. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Not at all, really. You’re doing us a favour taking the canary. Besides…I want to ask your advice about something. May I come again?’

  Tokue looked at Sentaro and nodded. ‘I’d like that, but…’ Her voice trailed off with an unspoken thought.

  A wide path led them away from the charnel house. In the distance they could see the outline of the shop and a building that might have been the bathhouse. They could have come directly on this path, but Tokue had chosen to take them on the longer, more indirect route through the woods.

  As they were heading back through the centre of the park again, Sentaro felt a tugging sensation at his back. He turned around and saw the stone cairn at the charnel house.

  Four thousand souls. Four thousand people who never went home. He felt their eyes boring down on him from above.

  19

  That night Sentaro went to bed without a drop to drink. He felt shivery and feverish. Lying curled up under the covers, he went over the day at Tenshoen in his mind like a clock turning backwards.

  He saw images of the charnel house shining in the evening sun, the path through the woods, flowers in bloom at the path’s edge, the hillock built by patients to remember their hometowns, the woman who’d brought them the biscuits…Then he suddenly remembered Tokue blowing her nose.

  Hansen’s was transmitted by nasal mucus…Tokue had said that.

  A chill swept through his burning body and he squirmed. Why, he wondered. Tokue had been cured more than forty years ago. So long ago you almost hesitated to use the term former patient. Why did he feel this way when he should know better than anyone? Sentaro could not understand where his anxiety sprang from.

  Was Wakana all right? He fervently hoped she was not sick too. Sentaro put his hand on his forehead and felt the burning heat. He recalled Wakana keeping her face down and averted the whole time on their way back. They were both shaken by the day’s experience.

  After saying goodbye to Tokue they had visited the National Hansen’s Disease Museum next to Tenshoen and walked through its wide spaces barely exchanging a word. They encountered a world, new to both of them, of unfathomable grief and suffering, that had long been buried in darkness. Sentaro was glad they had visited, he wouldn’t have wished otherwise. Although he could not put it into words precisely, he felt he had gained something from seeing and hearing the testimony of people who had lived through such adversity. At the same time his brain reeled with the images he had seen that now would not go away, whether his eyes were open or closed. Like the photograph entitled ‘Tongue Reading’ of an elderly patient who was so severely affected by the disease it had robbed him of his sight and the nerve-endings in his fingers and toes. As a result the man was unable to sense Braille bumps with his numb fingertips. But for some reason sensation in the tongue was the last to be lost, so instead of his fingertips he used the tip of his tongue to read, tracing each character one by one. The image of the straight-backed old man licking a book with his tongue was burned into his mind’s eye.

  There were numerous such photos. In one, a group of men made music with fingerless hands wrapped around harmonicas, and in another, an elderly woman was completely absorbed in making pottery with bent, gnarled hands.

  Sentaro had no connection to these people before now, but for some reason they had gotten inside him, whispering things in his ear and looking at him with troubled expressions. Sentaro couldn’t bear it and doubled over. His breath came out in feverish gasps.

  He thought about the path they had taken through the woods today. How many of them had walked along it hidden by those trees? And what about that prickly hedge ferociously shutting out the world? What did they feel when they saw it? He supposed it was an entirely different emotion from the sense of defeat he used to feel when he was behind bars. He’d been in the wrong – these people were innocent. There was a limit to his confinement – but when they had entered the law ordained they would be there for the rest of their lives.

  If it had been him, what would he have felt
and thought as he walked around those grounds? Would he have felt deep anger? Or then again, perhaps he would have done his best to forget about the world outside.

  Absorbed in these thoughts, Sentaro drifted off into a feverish doze. Suddenly he noticed that he seemed to have returned to the path and was walking along it again, heading over towards where the trees were thick. He went a little further and came to a clearing of cut grass. On the edge of the clearing a young girl stood wearing a rough cotton kimono.

  Sentaro knew immediately who she was; a fourteen-year-old girl who had been brought here, not understanding why; the young Tokue, who wept and wept until she had no more tears to shed.

  Sentaro stood behind her trying to think of words of comfort. But he knew that there was nothing he could say that would be of any help.

  What must she be feeling, this young girl, after being told she could never go out into the world beyond that hedge again, and knowing that her face might become disfigured. Where would she find hope?

  Sentaro stood staring at her back.

  What were the forces that played with this life? If she were being toyed with out of spite, at some point it would end, and she could move on. For example if public opinion were against her, times change, and eventually she could walk in the sun again one day. But who or what would want to torment a girl of only fourteen for the rest of her life?

  The thought was oppressive.

  Of course…it had to be the gods who were behind it all. The gods who whispered in her ear that she was better off not being born. The gods who declared she must suffer her whole life. What did Tokue think about life once she understood this? How was she going to live out the rest of it?

  She was just a girl, quietly sobbing her heart out.

  Sentaro could watch no more. He turned and went back along the forest path.

  20

  A cold autumn wind blew, shaking the few remaining leaves from the cherry tree outside Doraharu. People on the street were wrapped up in coats and scarves.

  Inside and out the cold was bone-chilling. Over a month had passed since Tokue departed, and the end of the year approached. Sales had not improved. The owner had taken to dropping by frequently and muttering comments about not making it through the year as she stared at the books.